MACD crossover, backtested
MACD is the difference between two exponential moving averages, and its signal line is an average of that difference, which makes the famous crossover a moving-average crossover with an extra layer of smoothing. That is worth knowing before you run it, because it sets the expectation: this behaves like a trend system, not like a timing oracle, and the standard 12/26/9 settings are a convention from the 1970s rather than a result anyone optimised.
Over September 2021 to September 2026, this setup lost to simply buying and holding. €10,000 became €11,437 (+14.4%), against €18,051 (+80.5%) for buy & hold, over 53 trades, with a worst fall of 16.8%. Change the ticker below and the picture changes. This is one stock over one stretch of history.
The rules, exactly
This is what the run above loads. Every number in it stays editable: change the ticker, widen the stop, and run it again.
- Buy at the close on the day the MACD line crosses above its signal line.
- Sell at the close on the day it crosses back below. Long or flat, never short.
- Standard settings: 12-day fast EMA, 26-day slow EMA, 9-day signal. Every one of the three is editable below.
- 0.1% commission and 0.05% slippage per side.
Screens for: $10B+ · 1M+ shares a day. That filter does nothing on the single-stock run above. It is the pool this strategy is really meant to trade, and it comes into play when step 1 is switched from one ticker to the whole US stock market. The momentum screener is a free way to see a ranked pool like it today.
What to watch for
MACD crossings are frequent in a sideways market and each one costs the spread twice, so a result that looks flat before fees can be clearly negative after them, which is why fees are on by default here. It is also the same underlying signal as a moving-average crossover, so running this beside the golden cross on the same ticker tells you more than running either alone. Treat 12/26/9 as one parameter set out of many, not as the strategy.
Before you trust any backtest
A backtest is a measurement of the past under assumptions you chose, and the assumptions are where results go wrong. Three that matter here: the run covers five years of daily closes, so it has seen one bull market and one bad year rather than a full cycle; fees and slippage are included but your broker’s may differ; and a strategy that fired only a handful of times has told you almost nothing, however good the numbers look. The tool reports the trade count for that reason. Read it first.
Want to change the rules rather than the numbers? The full backtester builds a setup out of plain-English conditions, and this template arrives in it already loaded and editable.
The other prebuilt strategies
- Buy the dip: Buy any day that falls 2% or more, and sell ten trading days later. No filter, no stop.
- Golden Cross: Hold while the 50-day average is above the 200-day; step aside when it crosses back under.
- 20/50 cross: The same crossover idea as the golden cross, on faster averages: 20-day over 50-day.
- RSI 30/70: The textbook RSI trade: buy when the 14-day RSI drops under 30, sell when it clears 70.
- One-year high: Buy a close above the highest close of the past year; exit on a 50-day closing low.
- RSI-2 reversion: Buy an uptrending market when the 2-day RSI washes out below 10; sell the bounce above 70.
- Trend pullback: In a long uptrend, buy the dip that reclaims the 50-day average, a bounce off the trend.
- Impulse pullback: A fresh 6/18 EMA cross marks a brand-new trend; buy its first small dip as it resumes.
- Donchian breakout: Buy a 20-day high the way the Turtles did; exit on a 10-day low or the 2R target.
- Bollinger reversion: Buy a close under the lower 20-day band; sell the snap back to the middle band.